On the surface, the wildly popular television show “Mad Men,”set in the 1960s, chronicled the life of high-flying advertising executive Donald Draper and his stylish coworkers. On a broader, cultural level, however, the show can be credited with a bringing about a national resurgence of mid-century mania. Increasingly, well-heeled homebuilders are favoring the modern designs that Winter Parkers are seeing pop up all over town. And, advised by publications like “Atomic Ranch,” some homeowners are doing the previously unthinkable—ripping out replacement wood flooring to reveal the sparkling terrazzo underneath. Can harvest gold appliances at Southeast Steel be far behind?

While you may have been following this trend, were you also aware that Winter Park boasts an extensive inventory of midcentury gems? Indeed, Winter Park’s renowned architectural heritage isn’t just about turn-of-the-century Victorians, 1920s bungalows and 1940s Mediterranean…

In his long career as a film producer, Gordon Gray is best known for making inspirational fact-based sports movies about subjects who overcame long odds, from baseball pitcher Jim Morris in The Rookie to football player Vince Papale in Invincible, to the gold medal-winning U.S. Olympic hockey team in Miracle. After Gray and his wife Kristen learned in March that both their 4-year-old daughter Charlotte and 20-month-old daughter Gwenyth have the incredibly rare and potentially fatal degenerative brain disorder Batten disease, it is Gray who is up against the odds and in need of a miracle.

After they received a nightmarish medical diagnosis in March, the Grays were told so few suffer from the disease — maybe 10 at any given time in the world — that there has been limited research towards a cure even though the disease was first discovered in 1903. At present, there is…

St. Augustine is the nation’s oldest city, right? The Spanish explorer and Florida’s First Governor Pedro Menendez de Aviles disembarked from his ship in St. Augustine in 1565, set up camp, and the rest is history, as they say. But what about Jean Ribault, Rene Goulaine de Laudonnaie and Fort Caroline in 1562? Or maybe Mayport, which Ribault sailed passed on his way to the high bluff on which Fort Caroline sits? And what about Don Tristan de Luna y Arellano trotting around Pensacola in 1559? Of course all of these “earliest” settlements are European settlements. It seems as though in the race for the oldest Florida’s more 50 indigenous cultures encountered by Europeans simply don’t “count.”

St. Augustine is the nation’s oldest continuous settlement by Europeans. Fort Caroline, you lose out. De Laudonnaie and Ribault established their fort and hung around for a bit, but ultimately…